VISA warns of POS malware incidents at gas pumps across North America

Payments processor VISA says North American merchants who operate gas stations and gas pumps are facing a rash of attacks from cybercrime groups wanting to deploy point-of-sale (POS) malware on their networks.

In two security alerts published in November and December, respectively, VISA said its security team investigated at least five incidents of the sort.

The payments processor said cybercrime groups carried out attacks with the main purpose of gaining access to fuel dispenser merchants' networks, where they installed POS malware. POS malware works by continuously scraping a computer's RAM for what looks like unencrypted payment card data, which it collects, and then uploads to a remote server. The VISA Payment Fraud Disruption (PFD) team says cybercrime groups appear to have found a weak spot in how gas stations and gas pump operators work.